Page 5 of Vampire Lee

Murrie nodded.

“In my line of work, you hear a lot of things, and at first I wasn’t paying attention, but—” He pressed his lips together. Maybe telling was stupid. Jala, his boss, would kill him if he told on her friends, and she was friends with at least one of the men he’d heard talk. She was a lioness, so she could cause a lot of damage, and he’d most likely lose the job.

“But?” Murrie waited.

“But…” Fuck, this was stupid, wasn’t it? He knew what happened in those places. A shudder went through him, but he did his best to ignore it.

“Lee?”

“I heard them talking about an underground fight. First, I didn’t pay attention because it happens all the time, right? But then—” He came to a halt. The words had tumbled out of him so fast he wasn’t sure if they’d made any sense to Murrie. “Then they said the bait finally was being shipped and was to arrive in two days, and something about how it was bad for the fighters’ training that the shipping had been delayed. And I heard it two days ago, so they should arrive here in Hagwall today.”

“Bait?”

“Do you know anything about dog fighting?”

Murrie swallowed and gave a slow shake of his head. “More than I want to, but not a lot.”

Lee filled his lungs. “Bait is used for stronger fighters to train on without risk of getting hurt. Fighting and/or killing someone with your claws for no other reason than you’re told to do so doesn’t come easy to most of us.”

Murrie paled. “Right.”

“You need to train your fighters to do it without thinking about what they’re doing.” Though many of them weren’t right in the head and took pleasure in hurting weaker beings. It was how Lee remembered it, at least.

A short nod followed his words.

“And since you don’t want your fighters to get hurt in the process, you bring in bait. Someone weaker who doesn’t stand a chance.”

“And you heard someone talk about bringing in bait?”

Lee was quiet for a few seconds. “I don’t care when they arrange normal fights. If two equally strong fighters want to beat each other bloody in front of an audience to make some cash, I simply look the other way. But if someone’s bringing in bait, it’s not participants who have chosen to be there, and it’s way more organized than a game for…fun.” He scrunched his nose.

“Gotcha.”

Lee waited while Murrie drummed the pen against the pad. Then hard brown eyes met his. They’d been blue before. “Can you give me names, location, anything along those lines?”

“I don’t know the names of those who were talking, but one of them comes by The Rambling Rogue now and again. I don’t think he lives in Hagwall, so not too often, but I’ve been there for years, so I recognize him. Bear, friends with Jala—”

“The lioness?”

“My boss, yes.”

Murrie nodded. “You think she knows what’s going on?”

Lee shook his head. “Nah, I find that hard to believe, but it doesn’t mean she won’t do what she can to protect her friend.”

“And you don’t know what means of transportation they’re using, where the new fighters will arrive, at what time, or anything along those lines?”

“Sorry, I…I looked for any of your people in the bar, but there was no one there. I didn’t know how to contact you, and I didn’t want to draw attention to myself by asking around, and yeah…” Fuck, should he have been asking around? “I’m not sure if it’s new fighters. It could be they keep a stock of weaker fighters to train on and those are the ones being shipped in now. Killing too many people will draw attention, and not everyone kills their fighters, but it doesn’t mean life as bait is pleasant.”

Murrie grimaced. “Right. We’ll look into our channels. Are you working tonight?”

Lee nodded, and Murrie wrote a list of numbers on the notepad, tore the page off, and handed it to Lee.

“These are our numbers.”

They were all the same apart from the last digit. Lee read the names. Murrie, Mars, Rei, Hanna, Faelan, and Devin.

“Devin can reach us all and most often knows where we are.” Murrie reached over and pointed at Devin’s name with the pen.

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